The Mad Earl's Bride (15 page)

He was tall, with broad shoulders, and even though he was whip-lean, he looked as strong as a prizewinning Longhorn bull. A spot of freshly dried blood stained his right cheek where he must have cut himself shaving. He’d shaved in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week? His hair was the color of coal, and he wore it slicked back off his forehead. His teeth were straight and white as piano keys, and I imagined that when he smiled, it went all the way up to his chocolate brown eyes. But he wasn’t smiling now.

Mr. Fant had caught me indisposed. I must have looked frightful in the frayed gray dress I wore when cleaning. The material was way too tight around my chest because my breasts had blossomed along with the spring flowers. Strands of unruly hair were popping out of my sloppy braid and falling around my face. I pushed them back.

Another step closer and he was only an arm’s length away.

My heart started thudding. His masculine fragrance wafted over to me in the heat of the noonday sun, notes of leather, oranges, rosemary, cedar, clove, and moss. Perfume! He was wearing perfume. I’d never met a man who wore perfume before, but it smelled mighty good, fresh and clean and rich.

My daddy always said I would have made a keen bloodhound with the nose I had on me. A well-developed sense of smell can be good for some things, like telling when a loaf of warm yeast bread is ready to come out of the oven, and inhaling a snout full of sunshine while unpinning clothes from the line, but other times having a good sniffer can be downright unpleasant—for instance, when visiting the outhouse in August.

“Is Corliss your father?”

My throat had squeezed up, so I just nodded.

“I’m John Fant.”

I knew who he was, of course. The Fants were the wealthiest family in Jeff Davis County. Truth be told, they were the wealthiest family between the Pecos River and the New Mexico border. The Fants had founded the town of Cupid, which lay twenty-five miles due north in the Foothills of the Fort Davis Mountains, and they owned the Fant Silver Mine, where my father worked. Three years before, when John had returned home with a degree from Maryland State College, his father, Silas Fant, had turned the family business over to his only son.

The screen door drifted open against my calf, and I bumped it closed again.

He arched a dark eyebrow. “And you are . . . ?”

“Millie Greenwood.” I barely managed to push my name over my lips.